


survival

by superfluouskeys



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 05:11:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16234841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: Hermione has stared death in the face so many times by now that it has almost lost its meaning.





	survival

**Author's Note:**

> A quick thing for the Bellamione discord, and also just to get myself into the mood because I've never written any Bellamione before!

Hermione has stared death in the face so many times by now that it has almost lost its meaning.  What kind of life would she have led if she were frightened of it?  What kind of help would she have been over the past few years if her primary concern were to avoid it?

The war is over and yet it will never truly end.  Hermione would never admit to her friends that she wakes screaming from nightmares that are far more memory than dream, nor would she ever confess to the treacherous thought that crosses her mind several times per day: that things were better before.  They were together, and they had a purpose.

Now Hermione is alone, and there is nothing but senseless wreckage to contend with.

There is one particular nightmare worse than all the others, worse than the blank stares of her parents who have forgotten her and begun a new life without her, worse than her friends falling dead before her eyes while she stands frozen in place, unable to save them, worse than the terrible, twisted face of Lord Voldemort laughing mirthlessly as he celebrates whatever hollow victory so soulless a thing can know.

Hermione wakes screaming herself hoarse, nothing but a thin blanket to bind her, still with the crackling echo of agony in her limbs.  She is twisted out of shape in the safety of her bed, hurting herself even in such a comparatively meaningless fashion, and all she can think is that she is glad that the only witch in this world who ever heard Hermione Granger beg for the sweet release of death is now dead, herself.

" _Dead_ ," Bellatrix Lestrange sneers at her, so close and so real it seems she must lurk just beyond the edges of Hermione's vision.  Bellatrix scoffs.  "Such a common thing."

"You aren't real," Hermione insists, even as a fresh shudder wracks her body.

She loathes that she remembers the way Bellatrix laughed, not the high-pitched, affected sound of mockery, but the quiet, breathy chuckle of genuine amusement.

"Aren't I?" Bellatrix wonders, and Hermione could swear she feels the words warm upon the tip of her ear, the same way the living witch had whispered to her with a wand at her throat.  "What is real, little Mudblood?  Is it you?  All twisted up in your bed at the mere _memory_ of me!  Why, I think I should be flattered!"

"You aren't real!" Hermione squeezes her eyes closed and clenches her fists against her forehead.  "This isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't--"

Bellatrix's breathless laughter gains a new shade now, a warmth that chills with the knowledge of its catalyst.  "Oh, I think I am still very real to you, little Mudblood.  What's a body if there's nothing inside it?  What's a life, if it hasn't touched the lives of others so...profoundly?"

 _You have ruined me_ , Hermione almost rasps, almost believes, for years have passed since she felt she had a place in the world, and what does she have to show for her time?

But of course Bellatrix is not real, does not exist outside her thoughts, and so feeds upon what Hermione has thought, regardless.  "Oh, but your mind is a stronghold," she says.  "Look at you, Queen of the Mudbloods, who goes about her day as though nothing is amiss!  Good thing we needn't worry about dear Hermione, oh, yes, she seems perfectly fine, can you believe Bellatrix Lestrange tortured her and she walked away unscathed?"

Bellatrix laughs again, too real and too solid, and her next words come slow and heavy.  "What.  A.  Hero."

Hermione rends herself free of the covers and stands from her bed.  She turns to face the sound, and perhaps because she gives it credence, Bellatrix takes shape in her mind.  She comes together out of the dust she was shattered into, blurry and disjointed, but too real to dismiss.

"I am surviving!" Hermione snarls at the apparition.  "In spite of what you've done to me, I am here!  I am surviving!"

Bellatrix lifts her chin in the disdainful manner of one who thinks herself better off, lifts the corner of her mouth into a haughty smirk before she responds, coolly, "Are you?  And how is that going, little Mudblood?  Have all your dreams come true?"

"You are dead!" Hermione points a finger at her as though to scold her back into inexistence.

Bellatrix shakes her head slowly, so much steadier, so much saner than she was in reality, and Hermione wonders how her own mind could conjure up such a circumstance.  "No," says Bellatrix.  She approaches, a faint swagger in her step so much more devastating than the mad unevenness of her gait in life.  She points to Hermione's temple with a finger made of fragments, and Hermione could swear she feels the air shift when the apparition draws near.

"I'm right here," says Bellatrix sweetly.

Dawn finds Hermione sleepless upon her knees, begging a dead woman to leave her in peace.  The grey light of morning banishes the too-real apparition of Bellatrix from her bedroom, and eventually she rises to wash her face and begin her day.

Hermione has stared death in the face so many time, it has almost lost its meaning.  To die would be as nothing to her, the consequence of the life she has led.  She wonders, as she contemplates her own face in the mirror, whether there is truly any way to survive the war she has witnessed.


End file.
